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MST Informas

Food security, poor farmers, and environmental impact are not often discussed when talking about bio-fuels. By Daniel Cassol (from Sem Terra magazine)

The discussion around clean, renewable energy production is not new, but now it has become more urgent, especially after the beginning of February when the Intergovernmental Panel of Climatic Changes released its report about global warming. Faced with such a distressing alarm, the world seems like it is facing the fact that it must changes its sources of energy, adopting alternative ways to produce the energy it consumes.

The MST recently returned from the African country of Mali. We went as part of a delegation of 12 representatives from Brazilian rural movements and environmentalist groups, joining more than 600 leaders from every continent on Earth. There we met with scientists, environmentalists, women’s movement activists, and members from a spectrum of other organizations, discussing the many questions raised by the goal of establishing food sufficiency for every country.

We of the movements that make up La Via Campesina are joining the groups allied with the indigenous struggles to gather signatures in a petition for the Demarcation of Tupinikim and Guarani indigenous lands that are owned by the Aracruz Cellulose company in Espírito Santo. The goal of the MST is to collect 100,000 signatures of workers throughout Brazil to pressure the Ministry of Justice to mediate and to immediately return the lands to the indigenous peoples.

Today we are sending a special Bulletin with an article published this month in the Caros Amigos magazine, written by Joao Pedro Stedile. The text is an analysis of the general situation in Brazil and addresses the perspectives of the Brazilian working class in 2007.

Education is a basic right for everyone, not the privilege of a few. Since 1989, it is with this conviction that the MST has fought for land reform that includes the issue of free and quality public education for rural people and in rural areas. So far, the landless movement has achieved approximately 3,000 public schools in the encampments and settlements countrywide, opening the door to quality education for 200,000 children and teenagers.

Now that the election has passed, the votes counted, and the winners and losers are known, the moment arrives to sum it up and to look ahead. Even more than counting the number of progressive congressmen and governors elected, we need to make an effort to analyze how we did and sum up the wins and challenges for the coming period...

The majority of the social movements took part in the discussions and in the campaign. But all this without illusions and with the ever-greater conviction that the transformations come from the actions of the people themselves. From there, the need for the people’s movements to have autonomy, theoretical elaboration, and capacity for mobilization.

We want to ask for your solidarity. On August 20, the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) will deliver the final report about the 18,000 hectares of indigenous lands in the north of Espirito Santo, today owned by Aracruz Cellulose. The area originally belonged to the Tupiniquim and Guarani peoples but in 1967, the company began to plant eucalyptus indiscriminately and evicted the villages from the region. Before the arrival of Aracruz, there were 40 indigenous villages in the state. Today there are only seven. At the same time, the company also entered the lands of more than 10 thousand afro-descendants and small farmers who lived as landowners in the state. One of those responsible for the extinction of the indigenous people, Aracruz wipes out cultures and human beings.

The planet’s food supply is threatened. If any of the ten companies that control the sale of seeds on the planet decide to suspend the sale of rice for example, this item is going to be missing from the tables of Brazilians. It’s a case of a $21 billion market that can be manipulated according to the will of its majority stockholders without any concern for the world’s food supply.